


If You Were a Tree, What Kind of Tree Would You Be? (1/1)

by earlgreytea68



Series: Chaosverse [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-26
Updated: 2008-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten and Rose play a very important game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You Were a Tree, What Kind of Tree Would You Be? (1/1)

**Author's Note:**

> This may be the only DW fic in the history of time to be a SNL crossover...
> 
> Thanks to [](http://jlrpuck.livejournal.com/profile)[**jlrpuck**](http://jlrpuck.livejournal.com/)  , as always, for the beta, and to Kristin for the brainstorming. Several story points here were stolen directly from her.

They sometimes played this game together. It had started after he regenerated, when he was busy trying to convince her that yes, actually, he really _was_ the same person.

  


She looked at him musingly. “Really. If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?” As if she could examine his answer to see whether she thought his previous self would have answered the same way. 

  
  


“What kind of tree would _you_ be?” he countered, tinkering randomly with a control. 

  
  


“That’s not fair, I asked you first.”

  
  


“A fygtymut,” he said. 

  
  


“What’s that?”

  
  


“It’s a tree. From the planet Hiccup.”

  
  


She wrinkled her nose. “The planet Hiccup?”

  
  


“Yes.”

  
  


“You’re making this up.”

  
  


“Am not.”

  
  


“Are, too.”

  
  


“I’m going to take you Hiccup to see the fygtymut tree. And how like me it is.”

  
  


“Is it a rude tree?” she asked, tongue peeping between her teeth. “Rude and not ginger?”

  
  


He frowned, _not_ amused, and tried to bring them to Hiccup to see a fygtymut tree. Except an evil botanist had cut down all the fygtymut trees , but for a few he kept in his greenhouse and to which he attached googly eyes. Rose collapsed into hysterical laughter at the sight of it, and the Doctor insisted the googly eyes ruined the extremely serious and impressive appearance of the fygtymut tree. Rose said it looked _exactly_ like him, all boggle-eyed, and the Doctor thought that if he was going to stop Rose laughing at him then the only thing for it was to kiss her, and so they shared their first kiss under a googly-eyed fygtymut tree in an evil botanist’s greenhouse. 

  
  


And it was really, if he said so himself, rather spectacular and would have gone on for much longer if the evil botanist hadn’t tried to kill them with pesticides. 

  
  


After they had subdued the evil botanist, he and Rose looked at each other, under the fygtymut tree where not much earlier he’d had his tongue down her throat and vice versa, and the Doctor felt oddly awkward. He was _not_ good at romance. He’d kissed her for the first time, after so many months of waiting for the right moment, under a googly-eyed fygtymut tree, and he wasn’t entirely sure that she would ever want him to kiss her again. 

  
  


He rubbed the back of his neck. “So,” he said. “Trees.”

  
  


She blinked, as if she hadn’t expected this to be the topic of conversation. “Yeah?”

  
  


“Let me show you something.” He hesitated just a second before taking her hand and leading her back to the TARDIS. 

  
  


She sat in the captain’s chair, oddly silent, while he moved around the TARDIS setting controls. She heard them de-materialize and then materialize somewhere else, and he said, “Open the door.”

  
  


Curious, she obeyed. They were in a forest, and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be seeing. Trees? Was he just showing her trees? She looked back at him. 

  
  


He was standing right beside her, and pointed suddenly, to a small sapling. “That one. That one right there.” 

  
  


She looked at it in bewilderment. “What about it?”

  
  


“It’s a Norway spruce,” he explained. 

  
  


“Ah,” she said, unsure why that should be impressive. 

  
  


“Stay here and watch it,” he told her, excitedly. “I’m going to speed time up for us.” He bounced back over to the console, and she watched the little tree as it grew and grew and grew. After a moment, the Doctor came back to stand behind her. She sensed that there was reverence involved here, for some reason, so she remained silent, and wondered why he had kissed her, and whether he would kiss her again, and why they were looking at a tree. 

  
  


“It’s nine thousand, five hundred years later,” he murmured, suddenly. “The year 2008. And there is the same Norway spruce.”

  
  


“The same tree?”

  
  


“The very same.”

  
  


“It’s over nine thousand years old?”

  
  


“Yes. I thought you might want to see it.”

  
  


She looked at him, meeting his eyes. “It’s brilliant,” she whispered. 

  
  


He lifted his hand and cupped her cheek, then said, abruptly, “Body of water.”

  
  


“What?” She looked startled. 

  
  


“If you were a body of water, what would you be?”

  
  


“I’d be…I’d be a little brook.”

  
  


“Why a little brook?”

  
  


“I don’t know. Brooks seem…happy.”

  
  


“Are you happy?” he whispered.

  
  


“Very, very happy,” she whispered back. “Are you going to kiss me again?”

  
  


“I…” He looked uncomfortable. “I haven’t decided yet. Do you want me to?”

  
  


“Why haven’t you decided?”

  
  


He was silent for a second. “What about weather? What type of weather do you think you are?”

  
  


No one could ever say of Rose Tyler, she thought, that she didn’t know how to take a hint. “I’m going to…” she said, feeling silly, and stepped past him. 

  
  


The Doctor slammed the TARDIS door shut, and didn’t apologize even when the ship flickered its lights in displeasure. Bloody hell, how was he supposed to interpret _that_? Why couldn’t Rose just have answered his question? Did she want him to kiss her again or not? Why was Rose Tyler so bloody _confusing_?

  
  


He stalked off to the library, and Rose found him there much later, reading sulkily. 

  
  


She worried on a nail for a second, then ventured, “Where are we?”

  
  


“I’ve no idea,” he answered, without looking up. 

  
  


“We landed, didn’t we? I felt it.”

  
  


“We landed, yes, but I’ve no idea where. The TARDIS was being a bit…uppity.”

  
  


“Well,” she said, striving for normalcy between them. “Don’t you want to go see?”

  
  


“Sure,” he responded, agreeably, putting down the book and accompanying her outside. Clearly, he was trying to ignore the awkwardness, too. 

  
  


The TARDIS had chosen a rather ordinary planet, and they wandered through the shops a bit. The Doctor watched Rose, as she exclaimed over the alien goods and exchanged pleasantries with everyone they encountered. She was breathtakingly beautiful, and she’d kissed him under a fygtymut tree, and she had not pushed him away, and possibly would still be kissing him and doing other things to him had the evil botanist not interrupted, and what, exactly, was he doing _not_ pulling her against him right here in this shop and snogging her senseless?

  
  


“It’s night,” she said, in surprise, as they stepped out into surprising darkness, the only lights leaking out from the shops around them. 

  
  


“It spins quickly, this planet,” he said. “Quick twilight.”

  
  


She tipped her head back, looking at the stars, and he stared at the column of her throat and thought about licking it. 

  
  


She looked at him, and he almost tripped at how beautiful she was, grinning with her tongue between her teeth. “Should we play that game you like?” she asked, as they walked. 

  
  


“What game do I like?” He couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. He couldn’t imagine why she didn’t just turn to him and kiss him. 

  
  


“If you were one of these stars—” She swept her hand over the sky –“which star would you be?”

  
  


He looked up at the stars briefly, then said, abruptly, “Can we talk?”

  
  


“Aren’t we talking now?” she asked, sounding confused. 

  
  


“Yes, but…” He stopped walking and turned to her, frustrated. “I _am_ the same.”

  
  


“What?” She was plainly bewildered. 

  
  


“I’m the same man. I am. Just because I never kissed you under a fygtymut tree doesn’t mean I’m _different_ now, Rose. I’m still me. I really am. I wanted you then and I want you now and I don’t know why I kissed you and I don’t know why I never kissed you before—”

  
  


She closed the distance between them, fastening her hands in his hair and kissing him to within an inch of his current life and just as he felt he was hovering on the edge of regenerating from sheer pleasure and delight and giddiness she pulled back. 

  
  


“A shooting star,” she gasped. 

  
  


“What?” he asked, dazedly. 

  
  


“That’s what star you are. That thing you want, that makes all your dreams come true.”

  
  


“A shooting star isn’t a _star_ , Rose.”

  
  


“Oh, just kiss me,” she said.

  
  


And as he decided it was easier to just obey her, he also decided that, if anyone was making dreams come true, if anyone was the shooting star, it was her. 

  
  


********

  


   


  


  
**  
Special Bonus Chaosverse Epilogue   
**

They eventually took the kids to Hiccup, to show them fygtymut trees.

  
  


“Your father kissed me for the first time under a googly-eyed fygtymut tree,” Rose told the kids, as they exited the TARDIS. 

  
  


“These trees have eyes?” exclaimed Athena, fascinated. 

  
  


“No. Just that particular specimen. An evil botanist was involved,” Rose explained, and grinned across at the Doctor. 

  
  


He winked at her, leading them over to a grove of trees. “Here we are! Fygtymuts! In the wild! Where they’re meant to be!”

  
  


They stood, for a second, looking at the trees. The kids got bored eventually and started a game of hide-and-seek in the forest. Rose stood with the Doctor, fingers interlaced.

  
  


She looked at him finally. “I liked them better with the googly eyes. They looked more like you.”

  
  


He smiled at her, and snogged her soundly under a fygtymut tree. Just for old time’s sake. 


End file.
